Resumo. The coastal lagoons in the northern Rio de Janeiro State (Brazil) present a wide gradient of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and water color, with the highest DOC concentrations reported in the literature for aquatic ecosystems. Thus, they represent a peculiar set of ecosystems for the study of the origin, processing and fate of DOC in inland waters. We reviewed data from 2 decades of studies on the carbon cycle in these coastal lagoons and discussed the fluctuations in the concentration and quality of DOC, factors affecting DOC microbial and photochemical degradation, CO2 emission, as well as the role of humic and non-humic carbon to the energy flow through the trophic chains. We show that DOC quality, not its quantity, determines the rates of photochemical and microbial degradation both seasonally (within system) and spatially (among systems), with the exception of DOC photo-oxidation among lagoons, which is partially explained by DOC concentration at regional scale. In humic lagoons, there is a fairly predictable pattern of seasonal variation in DOC concentration associated to rainfall-induced inputs of allochthonous C. However, little is known about the exact timing of these allochthonous inputs and how they relate to the seasonal variation of DOC chemical properties (i.e. its quality). Depth-integrated photo-oxidation rates were less representative in highly humic lagoons, due to strong light attenuation in the water column. Nevertheless, the potential contribution of photo-oxidation and bacterial respiration to total CO2 efflux (~11%) did not differ significantly when all lagoons were pooled together. Contrary to prevailing paradigms for humic waters, microalgae seem to be the main C source in humic lagoons, sustaining pelagic food webs through zooplankton, in spite of some contribution of allochthonous C. Thus, the predominant role of the microbial loop in the DOC recovery to food webs in such systems is to be questioned.